


Fight and Flight

by Sherbet_Sundae



Series: Reflections [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Recreational Drug Use, Underage Drinking, because I'm weak, more young halfling love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-26 13:28:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17746742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sherbet_Sundae/pseuds/Sherbet_Sundae
Summary: Yeza is not a fighter. Veth can be, if pressed.





	Fight and Flight

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently, I wrote another fic about these two because ???
> 
> I am so sure everything I've written is going to be jossed, but this has been fun and the last fic got a lot of positive attention! Thank you so much to everyone who commented. Comments are, for better or worse, what motivated me to write this.
> 
> I've turned this into a series. You can read the last one if you're so inclined, but you don't have too. I feel like this fic can mostly stand alone. Mostly.
> 
> As a general warning, there is some sex in this one. It's mostly glossed over and isn't there for erotic reasons, so it felt like false advertising to put it in the tags.
> 
> I absolutely despise tumblr but, if you are so inclined, right now you can find me at: idonottlikethishellsite.tumblr.com

Veth didn’t know how to feel when her oldest brother died. She imagined Yeza didn’t know how to feel either. Not about her brother, but about finding her down at the riverside. Wineskin in one hand, crossbow in the other. It was midday or thereabouts. Time enough for people to notice she wasn’t doing her job.

They’d forgive her, maybe. Figure she was mourning. Yeza knew better. That was why he was here now.

Yeza had the sense to wait for her to loose the bolt she had loaded before he cleared his throat. It did not hit the plank of driftwood she had wedged in the fork of a young tree. It flew instead into the distance.

“What?” she snapped. Veth wasn’t angry at Yeza. She was angry in general. It was why she had come here. To be alone. She could hardly blame him for not realizing she wanted to get away from everyone. It was something she did often. Except getting away from everyone didn’t usually include him.

“Are you okay?” asked Yeza, regarding her carefully and from several feet away.

It was a stupid question and a loaded one. “Yes… No… I don’t know!” That was the problem. She raised the wineskin and took another drink. It was almost empty. She couldn’t remember how full it had been when she had walked out the front door.

“Are you sure you should be— Where did you get that?”

Veth wasn’t sure if Yeza was referring to the crossbow or the wine. She didn’t like the question either way. He’d asked her that a lot over the years. An innocent enough question on its own. There was another question attached to it though, one left unsaid but explicitly implied, ‘Did you steal it?’

It had been a long time since Veth had stolen anything. Anything that counted anyway. What had been a compulsion as a girl was easier to control now. A lot of things were easier to control or, at the very least, repress. Hide away.

But people had long memories. They still watched her in shops, eyed her collections for pieces they recognized. She liked to give Yeza things. Ingredients, books, anything he needed to work towards a life as a respected alchemist. “Where did you get it?” he’d ask, even though the answer was always the same. She had paid for it. With what money she made, after she had spent the rest on necessities. There wasn’t anything else she needed it for. Seeing him happy was enjoyable, having him doubt her less so.

The worst part was that the question was justified today. She had stolen the crossbow _and_ the wine.

“I got it from home.” The same was true of either. The crossbow was her father’s, gone now for several years. Passed down to her oldest brother, dead now several days. The wine was her mother’s, drinking heavily since the loss of her husband, in a drunken stupor since her son was taken. Veth loaded another bolt.

“Put that down. Let’s just talk.”

The next bolt hit the driftwood. It splintered on impact. He was probably right. She took another drink.

“Veth.”

She was not a good person. She hadn’t been very sad when her brother died. She hadn’t been very sad about her father either. She hadn’t liked either of them very much. She didn’t argue with the people who said her brother had died a hero, but she didn’t think he had. He hadn’t been out hunting goblins when they killed him. He’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Being unlucky didn’t make you a hero.

He was dead, though. She should have felt bad about that. Should have felt something other than pity for herself. Home hadn’t been much before. It wasn’t anything now. It was cold and it was rancid and it was a place where she was not welcome. That life could wear away at a family, raze their house like a storm and leave her behind was not as it should have been. It was how her mother felt. It was how the town felt. No one had to tell Veth that. She understood. She didn’t want to be there in the wreckage either.

It was so easy for everyone else. All of it. Why couldn’t she just be someone different? Someone who did things worth being proud of. Someone who was sad when they ought to be. Someone who was ready to step up to the task of comforting their mother when things fell apart.

Someone who did not yell at Yeza when he, understandably, felt the need to take the crossbow from her.

Someone who did not finish the rest of the wine when he tried to take that as well.

Someone who did not get violently ill a scant few minutes later.

Veth wished she could say that vomiting into the bushes while Yeza held her hair back was the lowest point he had ever seen her at… But that probably wasn’t true.

Yeza stayed with her. He was a good person, if not a particularly sensible one. She laid there for a very long time afterward, curled up on her side with her head in his lap. He ran a hand up and down her arm. Up and down. Up and down.

“I don’t think there’s any wrong way to feel,” he said. And then later, “To be honest, I didn’t like him much either.”

 

* * *

 

 

Veth did not know where the crossbow went. She was certain Yeza had put it somewhere. (He was not a good liar.) But she did not know where where he had hidden it.

No one noticed. No one noticed much of anything back home. Not anymore.

That Yeza did not trust her with a crossbow was something Veth had mixed feelings about.

On the one hand, she wasn’t completely incompetent. She knew how to use it. She wasn’t even a terrible shot. Almost no one in Felderwin was. It was a farming town. Ranged weapons weren’t just commonplace, they were a necessity.

On the other hand, she had been shooting it drunk. She would contend that her accuracy had not been terrible while she was intoxicated, but that Yeza was still concerned seemed… fair.

The fuzzy numbness the alcohol had provided was tempting to return to. The acidic burn and remembered taste of it coming back up gave her pause. As did the idea of Yeza seeing her like that again.

But she was restless. Her heart raced even when she was still. Her skin was electric and raw.

“What about this?” Yeza asked the next day at the river, holding a small brown bottle. It was opaque, but she knew what was in it.

Yeza apprenticed at an apothecary. He had access to interesting things. Veth was quick to label herself a bad influence, but she wasn’t sure he wouldn’t have experimented with the same things without her. With the right tools and knowhow it was easy to tweak pre-existing compounds and make them slightly more… fun.

They’d played around with substances before to mixed results. Not always good. Not much more elegant than vomiting into the bushes. It was different than drinking, though. It wasn’t a lonely experience. It was shared.

Veth opened her mouth and watched Yeza hold the dropper over her tongue. The taste was bitter, but fifteen minutes later that didn’t matter.

This mixture was one she knew. It was one they’d created together, making minor changes here and there. Her pulse slowed, her body felt lighter. She stretched out on her back and looked up at the clouds. She breathed.

Yeza’s hand found her forearm. His fingers skimmed her wrist. It felt good. If she wanted right now, she could direct all her attention toward it, feel only that. Getting lost was nice when you weren’t doing it alone.

They’d had sex like this. They’d had sex more than two unmarried people probably should. It wasn’t like there was a whole lot else to do in a small town. Work. Get a little high. Have sex. Seemed inevitable that you’d mix two or more on occasion.

She didn’t want to do that now, and Yeza didn’t have to be told. “It’ll be fine,” he said, his hand going up and down her arm. Up and down. Up and down. “You won’t be there forever.”

She wouldn’t have to stay at home, he meant. She wouldn’t have to because they would get married. They’d have their own home, their own family, their own life. It went unsaid, but it was implied.

Yeza hadn’t proposed to her. She wasn’t sure he would ever do it properly or that she needed him to. Marriage was a subject that had come up casually years ago, though Veth’s feelings toward the idea still ranged from giddy to a lingering doubt. A fear that her brothers were right, that he said things like that so that she would do the things girls with better prospects and more self-respect refused to do.

But they had been together since they were children, and now they were at an age where marriage wasn’t something so abstract and far off. And, really, she needed to give Yeza credit. If all this really was some sort of elaborate long con… Well, there were almost certainly easier ways to get laid.

And it wasn’t like Veth didn’t enjoy fooling around. She had never much cared for her body, but she had gained a strange kind of appreciation for it through Yeza’s hands and his mouth and the things he said that made them both blush. Yeza knew her in every way she imagined someone was capable of knowing a person outside of themselves. He knew her and he liked her and he kept liking her, and she loved him for it.

 

* * *

 

 

The first time she bit him she had been worried. She’d thought of her brother and the scar on his arm and the way her mother had scolded her, made her feel like an animal.

“N-no, that’s fine,” Yeza had stammered. And he asked her to do it again. And she did. And he buried his fingers in her hair.

 

There was a button in Veth’s mouth now. She had it between her teeth. It had come from Yeza’s vest, torn off somewhere between pushing him down and climbing on top. It was late and dark. Bales of hay were not the most comfortable surface to fool around on, but it was better than the floor of the barn.

“Oh,” said Yeza when they were finished and in the process of getting presentable enough to head back home. Veth could see him rolling a frayed thread between his fingers. “Do you have it?”

Veth took the button from between her teeth and let it fall into her palm.

“Can I have it back?”

“Why? Are you going to sew it back on right now?” She turned it in her fingers. “I’ll do it for you. Later.” She had a lot of buttons from Yeza. Her hands needed something to do when he held her sometimes. Threads could only stand so much twisting and plucking before they gave up. She had quite the collection of buttons she had promised to sew back on. Yeza never asked when.

When they were married. She would do it when they were married.

“Do you want to go again?” asked Veth.

“Ah…” began Yeza, in a tone that meant, ‘no.’ “We should get home.”

But Veth didn’t want to go home. The barn smelled damp and the hay was making the back of her neck itch, but she liked this better. “Can that wait… Just for a little while? Come on.”

Moonlight came in through the gap in the barn door and through the unpatched holes in roof. Veth could see the way Yeza tilted his head as he looked down, considering her. “Okay. We just… We can’t fall asleep.” He cast a furtive look around. “Also I need to, um— I need to, maybe, go around the side of the barn and, um—”

“Piss?”

“Yes.”

“Then go.” Veth reclined fully, stretching her arms above her head. “Just be careful.” If they got caught no good would come of it. People talked enough about them already.

Veth listened to Yeza’s footsteps retreat, listened to the door creak slightly as he left. She turned the button in her hand and thought of their wedding. Would they have a ceremony? She wanted to wear a dress, at least. Even if they didn’t. Something nice.

Her mother still had her wedding dress. Veth had seen it once, laid out carefully on her parents’ bed. It was white silk, flowers embroidered into its hem with golden thread. “Maybe you can wear it one day,” her mother had said, rubbing the fabric between her fingers. “Maybe.”

Veth would not ask to wear it and was certain that her mother would not offer. Not now.

Veth still wanted a dress. She thought of cutting a square from it on their wedding night and adding it to her collection. She thought of a day in the distant future where she spread it out on a bed and showed it to their children.

Children. There was a thought, thrilling and terrifying all at once. Newlyweds had children. That’s what you did in towns like Felderwin. You grew up and you helped with the farming and you settled down and you had children and they grew up and helped on the farms and the cycle continued. Veth would never force that kind of life on any child she raised. They would have a choice, but Veth wanted boring. She chose boring.

She wanted Yeza to have his apothecary. And she wanted small seasonal festivals. And she wanted children, hectic mornings, lazy afternoons. Felderwin didn’t have to like her. A family was enough.

Veth closed her fingers around the button in her hand and turned her head when she heard a sound. She expected Yeza but didn’t see his silhouette against the door. A shadow passing by, footsteps. This wasn’t a barn used for livestock. It had been once, but they had built a new one years back. Now it was used for storage, where they kept things to take to the crossroads and sell to people passing through. There were crates in the corner. Something moved there. Veth thought she knew what.

Slowly, Veth rolled onto her side. She felt hay against her cheek. She slowed her breathing. She wanted to run but tried to think.

And then the barn door opened.

Not all the way but enough. The thing at the crates turned toward the noise. A goblin. Veth knew that with certainty now, could see it. It didn’t see her, but it did see Yeza. It wouldn’t want him getting away, wouldn’t want him calling for help.

Yeza staggered backward. Or tried to. Goblins were quick. It grabbed him by the front of his shirt, pulled him inside with one hand while the other went to its hip.

Veth was quick too. She was halfway across the barn before she realized she was moving. Surprise was the only advantage she had, and she didn’t use it very well. She could have thrown something, could have yelled, could have improvised some sort of weapon. Everyone born in Felderwin were taught as children what to do when they encountered a goblin. Never in her life had it been suggested to Veth that she tackle one.

There was a flash of steel in the moonlight as they hit the ground. A dagger. It was on the goblin’s belt. It was what it had been reaching for on its hip. Veth hooked a leg around the goblin’s waist, trying to keep its hand from it. An elbow connected with her middle knocking the air from her lungs.

They were about the same size, but the goblin was stronger. Veth grabbed for an ear and pulled. Hard. “Yeza!” She looked up in time to see him scramble through the barn door and out into the night.

Time slowed. Was he getting help? He would have to make it across the fields. It would take a while. Longer to wake someone up. Longer still to lead them back. Veth couldn’t have put a name to the emotion she was feeling in that moment, but there wasn’t time enough to dwell on that.

Nails bit through her skirt and into the flesh of her thigh. Her arm was wrenched away and down. Together they rolled toward the crates, colliding with them. Veth did her best to keep her arms and legs locked around the goblin. She was certain that her being behind it was the only thing keeping her from being overpowered.

A sharp pain again. Teeth this time. Her shoulder blade scraped across the slats of a crate. One of her legs bent wrong beneath her.

And then the goblin went very still. Movement caught Veth’s eye again. There was a shape in the door. Yeza. He had a crossbow, though he didn’t look like he quite knew what to do with it. His hands fumbled over the shaft of the bolt he was trying to load and he seemed hesitant to shoot. A good thing too. It wasn’t a sure thing who he would hit if he fired now.

The goblin stopped fighting Veth and jerked forward, making a concentrated effort to reach Yeza. She did her best to stay on top, heard the goblin shout something in a language she didn’t understand.

Veth was thrown to one side. Yeza strafed right, half-running, half-stumbling towards her. She tried to tell him to shoot, but either he didn’t understand her or he didn’t trust his own aim. He shoved the crossbow into her arms and—

“Veth?”

She heard Yeza breathe her name and felt his hand on her shoulder. “Hang on.” She put the crossbow to one side. It wasn’t loaded anymore.

“Veth?”

“Hang on!” She got up off her knees took a couple steps forward to where the goblin lay twitching. The bolt was in its neck. Angled to the left a little. Blood bubbled up around it as it tried to breathe.

Veth thought of the time she had gone with her brothers to the edge of the fields. Some of the older boys had been tasked with hauling off the bodies from a raiding party. They strung up the corpses as a warning. People said that helped after a big attack. Made the goblins think twice about trying again.

Veth thought of her oldest brother tripping her. She thought of falling onto one of the bodies. The smell. The teeth. How the waxy skin had looked close up.

That had been scary and so was this, but the fear felt distant. It felt removed from herself. The goblin had managed to draw its dagger at some point during the struggle. Veth saw it a few inches away from its outstretched hand. She didn’t have anything else to use, so she grabbed that. She did what she had to and then she dropped it.

Or started to. It occurred to her then that goblins didn’t usually venture into Felderwin alone. She gripped the hilt and straighted up. She reached back with her free hand and stretched her fingers out towards Yeza. “Come on,” she hissed and heard her voice shake. “Did you see any others?” she whispered when he reached her.

Yeza shook his head in the darkness. “I didn’t see any. But I didn’t— I wasn’t looking.”

“It’s okay,” said Veth, because she could hear the regret in his voice. She recognized it, knew he felt stupid, like he’d messed up.

Veth gave Yeza a gentle tug, keeping him close and behind her as she moved toward the barn door. The dagger she held out in front of herself. They were very quiet. For a long time they were very quiet. It would be hard to hide in the fields. If the goblin had friends they had probably retreated. Maybe they had heard the commotion and thought there was a bigger threat inside than a couple of panicking halflings. Veth had seen that happen before. She’d seen goblins scatter and run when things got bad. She’d seen them abandon each other.

Yeza hadn’t abandoned her.

“We should tell someone,” said Yeza.

“We should.” Veth took a step backward into the barn, nearly trampling Yeza’s feet in the process. “Probably.”

“Probably?”

Veth didn’t want to explain what they had been doing in the barn. “We’ll pound on the guardhouse door and yell, goblins. And we’ll… I dunno. We’ll duck into an alley or something.”

“What if no one hears us?”

“Then we’ll do it again.”

“Okay.” Yeza squeezed her hand. She squeezed his back.

Veth left the dagger. She took the crossbow. It was hers— or the one she had stolen, rather. Yeza admitted to hiding it. He’d stashed it in the old woodshed behind the barn. He apologized. Veth didn’t point out that if he hadn’t confiscated it from her one or both of them might be dead. She didn’t want to think about that.

 

They went the long way, off the main road and off the dirt footpaths. Veth stopped at Yeza’s house first. She left him outside his bedroom window. “Wait here,” she said, because she didn’t trust him to make a quick retreat when she knocked on the guardhouse door. He’d stumbled through the fields and stopped altogether once. She thought he’d puke, but he had kept it together.

Veth laid the crossbow at his feet and took his head between her hands. “Wait here,” she whispered. He looked like he might argue with her but stopped himself. He nodded.

There were no people on the streets. There rarely were at this hour. A lit lantern hung outside the guardhouse. There would be someone on duty inside. Veth charted a course in her head and ran, pausing just long enough to pound her fist several times on the door. “Goblins at the east barn!” And then she kept running, ducking around the dressmaker’s shop two doors down.

Veth pressed her back to the wall and waited until she heard voices, movement. Someone had heard. Good enough. She kept to the shadows and made her way back to Yeza.

He was where she had left him. He was sitting beneath his window, his head in his hands. He jumped when Veth crouched down beside him. “Sorry,” she said, toeing the crossbow over so she could sit close. “It’s done.” She motioned vaguely in the direction of the guardhouse. “If there are more they’ll find them.”

“They’ll find the one you killed?”

“I mean… probably.”

“You killed it.”

“Yeah.” But there was something to the way he had said “it” that felt heavy. Veth had killed things before. Livestock mostly. Predators when they got too close to farmland. A goblin was a kind of predator. What she had done didn’t feel like a heavy thing.

“I’ve never been that close to one. One that was alive, I mean.”

“Me neither.”

“Are you all right?” asked Yeza. Veth nodded, but he took her arm anyway, found where the goblin had bitten her. His hands were shaking. “We should wash that— And disinfect it. I’m sure I have something inside that—”

“It can wait a minute,” Veth interrupted. She didn’t think either of them were up to the task of sneaking through his house to retrieve medical supplies unnoticed. Not right now. All Veth wanted to do right now was sit.

Yeza didn’t argue. He let go of her arm. “You were really… You were really brave.”

The words moved through Veth and into the night. It didn’t feel like they were meant for her. She had been terrified. “Are _you_ all right?”

“I don’t know.” Yeza rubbed the heel of his hand across his eyes and looked away, embarrassed. “Yeah. I guess. I— I don’t— I don’t know what I would have done if…”

“You were very smart back there. You were thinking a lot clearer than I was.” Veth said it because she thought he needed to hear it and because it was true.

Yeza sniffed and wiped an arm across his eyes this time. “I should have…” He trailed off. He didn’t know what he should have done, just that he should have. Veth knew that feeling. She’d lost count of the things she should have done during her life.

“We’re all right,” said Veth, not because she knew that was true but because it was what they both needed to hear. “But I should definitely teach you how to use a crossbow.”

Yeza laughed, a slightly miserable sound but a laugh all the same. Veth pulled him close and he leaned into her, resting his forehead against his shoulder. He was still scared, still breathing fast. Veth knew that feeling too, feeling jumpy and wired long after a thing had happened. “We’re all right,” she said again and kissed the top of his head. And they were. At least for now.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments motivate me to write more, so any are appreciated. I've got one more fic kicking around in my head that I might write. It'll inevitably be dark and depressing and concerning what are probably the bleakest canonical moments of their lives but... *shrug*


End file.
